SOMOS Weeklies – Wallace Stegner

SOCIETY OF THE MUSE OF THE SOUTHWEST

SOMOS 30^th Annual Fundraiser

To Feature Poet Michael C. Ford

Well-known Los Angeles poet Michael C. Ford will perform Friday, June 15^th at the 30^th Annual SOMOS fundraising event at the Mabel Dodge Lujan House. Co-Sponsored by the MalPais Review & the Border Poetics Consortium, Ford will be appearing at this event as part of a poetry tour he is making in New Mexico during June.

We are pleased to have a poet of Michael Ford’s stature & sophistication presenting his work to the 30^th Annual SOMOS Annual fundraiser. Many of us have read his work & look forward to seeing him in person,” said Alan Macrae, President of SOMOS. Ford first read his poetry along with Michael McClure in 1969 at a fundraiser for Norman Mailer’s run for Mayor of New York City. Ford, who hosts a poetry-jazz show on LA radio, first gained national notice with a Grammy Nomination in 1987 for his avant-garde LP Language Commando. Recently he has recorded poetry /music collaborations with former members of The Doors Ray Manzarek and John Densmore. He was nominated for a Pulitzer prize in 1998 for his poetry volume Emergency Exits. He later gained attention for the poem “Vietnam/Peace Casualties,” which was nominated for the 2006 PushCart Prize. Instructor at multiple national venues in PEN USA’s “Pen in the Classroom,” Ford’s latest book is “The Demented Chauffeur” (2009, Ion Drive, L.A., Ca). Ford has published some 20 books of poetry and edited the poetry journal The Sunset Palms Hotel (1974-1977) he is also a playwright, essayist and musical journalist as well as one of most well-known poets in Los Angeles. Gary Brower, editor of the MalPais Review, and co-sponsor of the event, said, “Ford is a fantastic poet and last read to great effect with Michael McClure at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles for McClures 79^th Birthday reading. He is a sophisticated and urbane performer with years of experience.”

The fabulous TAOS PORTRAITS BOOK is available for sale at the SOMOS Office!

SOMOS presents a Wallace Stegner Documentary (a free event)   

Sunday, June 24th, 2 PM at the Harwood Museum of Art

Wallace Stegner, a biographical film portrait, celebrates the 2009 centennial of his birth.  Wallace Stegner was an acclaimed writer, conservationist, and teacher.  He became one of America’s greatest writers.  His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angle of Repose and Beyond the Hundredth Meridian.  His The Wilderness Letter became the conscience of the conservation movement.  Wallace Stegner mentored a generation’s greatest writers, including Ken Kesey, Edward Abbey, and Larry McMurtry. Narrated by Peter Coyote, this one-hour documentary paints a portrait of the West that Wallace Stegner so loved.  The film reveals insights into his life through interviews with his famous students, contemporaries and family.

Support SOMOS when Spring cleaning!  Donate items to Pieces Consignment and give the SOMOS account number # 558. Thanks to all have been contributing!!

SOMOS needs volunteers to help us staff SOMOS on Monday and Friday afternoons from 1-4 and Saturdays from 10-1 to increase used book sales hours.  Please call 575-758-0081 or email somos@somostaos.org.

The Hardey Writers Group is now meeting at the SOMOS Space, 7-9 p.m. every Wednesday night (except the first Wednesday of the month) at SOMOS Headquarters.  New members welcome!

Dr. Katherine Toy Miller of Taos, New Mexico, will present “Native American Connections: The Early Moderns, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Taos Pueblo, and the D. H. Lawrence Ranch,” a free lecture sponsored by the Friends of the Taos Library and the Friends of D. H. Lawrence, at the Taos Public Library at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 16.  A free orientation to the D. H. Lawrence Ranch (located seventeen miles north of Taos off Highway 522 near San Cristobal) by Bill Haller, president, Friends of D. H. Lawrence, and other group members will be available from approximately 11:30-1:30.  

Dr. Miller will offer an overview of European and American interest in the primitive in general and Native Americans in particular as a means to revitalize turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Western culture, to create “a new heaven and new earth” as Lawrence promised Frieda he would do (Not I, But the Wind 40).  This historical perspective reveals connections between the early Modern European and New York artists, especially Alfred Stieglitz, Mabel Dodge (later Luhan), and D. H. Lawrence, and shows how early Modernist ideas influenced Mabel Dodge to purchase a mountain ranch (today known as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch) on a Taos Pueblo/Kiowa Indian trail in northern New Mexico in 1920 and why D. H. and Frieda Lawrence and others were drawn there as well as introducing the Taos Pueblo Native Americans they met.

Dr. Miller writes scholarly narratives on D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, mutual friends who all lived briefly in Taos.  She recently advised BBC radio producer Steven Rajam on his documentary “Lawrence in New Mexico” for which she was interviewed by British author Geoff Dyer (www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016lh1c).  Her presentation in Taos last summer, “Spiritual Connections: Georgia O’Keeffe and D. H. Lawrence,” was part of the panel “D. H. Lawrence and the Americans” at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, an international interdisciplinary conference February 2012.  Further background information is available at the Taos Cultural Energy website (www.culturalenergy.org/lawrence.htm), the Friends of D. H. Lawrence website (www.friendsofdhlawrence.org), and the Mabel Dodge Luhan House website (www.mabeldodgeluhan.com) including the blog by Liz Cunningham. 

Dr. Miller’s prose poetry chapbook, In a Cosmic Egg, is available at Finishing Line Press (www.finishinglinepress.com) under the pen name M. Kaat Toy.  

For further information contact Dr. Miller at 575.785.7837 or Taos Public Library at 575.758.3063.

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